


good bad example

by nysscientia



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Banter, F/F, Patrolling, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 04:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2011797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nysscientia/pseuds/nysscientia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The car ride to Faith’s apartment is mostly awkward and quiet, but that’s almost comforting.  Her place has underground parking, which for some reason feels like the most surreal part of the whole experience.</p>
<p>“Probably nice when it rains,” Buffy comments.</p>
<p>“Oh, yeah, that’s me to a T,” Faith answers.  “All about avoiding the mess and wet.”  She glances sidelong at Buffy and then away again.  Buffy wishes Faith hadn’t offered to carry her bags up to the room, so she’d have something to do with her hands.</p>
<p>Faith orders a pizza while Buffy drops her things in Faith’s spare room– which, Faith has a spare room; when did she become the one with extra dwelling space?</p>
<p>After she’s dumped her backpack and shoved her bag into a corner between the futon and the wall, Buffy changes into a blouse and her new skirt and then immediately feels stupid.  But changing back seems worse, so she shakes herself and goes to meet her fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	good bad example

**Author's Note:**

> Set after series seven but disregarding most of comics canon. Written for [Aubrey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aubkae/pseuds/aubkae).

The hellmouth isn’t actually in Cleveland. It’s in a nearby suburb– under a strip mall, apparently– which means Faith’s staying a ways from the airport. Buffy expected to catch a cab; slipped the cash for it into her carry-on, even. But when she stumbles out into short-term parking, tripping over nothing but her own feet after being curled up on a plane, Faith is waiting. It’s a stark kind of sunny out, muddy snow in dark corners and puddles reflecting bright and harsh on the sidewalks, and when Faith smiles steam curls out from between her lips. She’s only marginally more prepared for the weather than Buffy is, in an army green tank under a beaten leather jacket, but she still gives off this _vibe_. Buffy tugs at the fraying cuffs of her comfy plane-riding hoodie.

Her suitcase’s wheels are funky, clatter when she rolls it– but Dawn insisted that carrying a big bag one-handed was too conspicuous, claimed the Cleveland hellmouth was more organized than Sunnydale’s. Generally did a lot of the squawking that was funnier back when Buffy was still the tall one.

Faith hefts all the luggage into the trunk at once like it weighs nothing, and Buffy rolls her eyes so hard she sees into a demon dimension.

The car ride to Faith’s apartment is mostly awkward and quiet, but that’s almost comforting. Her place has underground parking, which for some reason feels like the most surreal part of the whole experience.

“Probably nice when it rains,” Buffy comments.

“Oh, yeah, that’s me to a T,” Faith answers. “All about avoiding the mess and wet.” She glances sidelong at Buffy and then away again. Buffy wishes Faith hadn’t offered to carry her bags up to the room, so she’d have something to do with her hands.

Faith orders a pizza while Buffy drops her things in Faith’s spare room– which, Faith has a spare room; when did she become the one with extra dwelling space?

After she’s dumped her backpack and shoved her bag into a corner between the futon and the wall, Buffy changes into a blouse and her new skirt and then immediately feels stupid. But changing back seems worse, so she shakes herself and goes to meet her fate.

Faith is sitting on the kitchen counter, pouring wine into a pint glass that she obviously stole from a local bar.

“Sorry about the fancy stemware,” Faith says, and Buffy shrugs, takes a sip. She doesn’t know anything about reds; it seems okay. It’s nice to have something to hold.

She waits for Faith to pour another for herself, but she just reaches into a cupboard immediately below her and pulls out a bottle of Jack. Buffy pulls up a chair from the kitchen table and they sit around the counter, even though the living room is only a few feet away.

“Pizza’s here in twenty,” Faith announces, and Buffy thanks her for letting her crash and asks stupid questions about the neighborhood and drinks her wine.

After the delivery guy leaves, Faith says “ready for some shop talk?” and Buffy says “dear God, am I,” and somehow everything gets way easier.

“You don’t wanna see the kind of demons who are cool with the mystical energy of middle America, B,” Faith says, chasing a hanging strand of cheese from her pepperoni.

“Are you seriously telling me these demons are too Midwestern for you?” Buffy asks, incredulous.

Faith snaps, “What, like you want to see who haunts the real housewives of Cuyahoga County?” And the husk in her voice cracks a little the way it does sometimes, and Buffy notices they’re both grinning.

-

So it turns out that even though she’s been tracking it for almost a week, Faith doesn’t have any more idea of how to find an incubus than Buffy does, and the usual hit-a-club-and-wait-for-disaster-to-strike doesn’t work as well in the suburbs of Ohio.

“I just don’t think we’re going to find it here,” Faith repeats. “Andrew said incubi don’t go for the night owl crowd; they’re into vanilla. _Really_ into boring.”

Buffy takes another sip of her beer, frowns. “What were his actual words?”

“Something about drawing energy from illicit something. Taboos. I don’t know, I paid more attention to the whats and wheres of stabbing.” She tosses back the rest of her drink, grins. “Come on, maybe we’ll have better luck if we get in on the action.”

Which clearly contradicts everything she just said, but Buffy still follows her out onto the dance floor.

It’s funny– the club is smaller, emptier than the Bronze ever was; Faith’s belligerently dark lipstick and pleather are gone; there’s an obvious underrepresentation of the high school crowd, compared to five (six?) years ago– and yet. They slip into it easily, their old rhythm, dancing and patrolling at the same time. There’s a constant buzz of men filtering in and out around them, lanky guys with piercings and beefy dudes in polos. Faith graciously dances with just about all of them– usually several at once, for efficiency– and Buffy accepts the occasional arm around her waist, press of chest against her back. But they all drift away after a song or two, some of them irritated when they don’t get more attention, others laughing and accepting, more than a few casting confused glances between Buffy and Faith. Buffy keeps her eyes on the dark corners of the bar and the back exit, tries not to notice those looks. She can’t blame the guys for wondering, though; she and Faith are a good team. They’re in sync when they hunt– she can accept that that’s what it is now, doesn’t mind the word anymore– and there’s no way even guys from Podunk, Ohio don’t notice it.

Buffy’s only had one beer, isn’t sure she even finished it, but she still feels jittery and light-headed when Faith surges forward, slips her fingers into Buffy’s belt loops and pulls her close.

“Check out Johnny Four-Eyes and Tall, Dark and Creepy,” she murmurs, lips grazing the shell of Buffy’s ear. “Two o’clock.”

Buffy checks her own two o’clock and sees nothing, realizes that of course Faith isn’t going to translate reference points, and turns to look at Faith’s two. Faith’s hands slip out of her belt loops easily, and they stand chest-to-back, a palm landing lightly on Buffy’s hip.

The club is full of outrageously tall men– Midwestern winters, or something– but this guy is easily six five, six six. Almost– seven feet? No, Buffy’s sure that’s wrong. He hunches, movements weird and fluid; it’s hard to decide how tall he is.

He’s holding hands with a kid who can’t be more than nineteen, thick glasses covering up big doe eyes and a heavy blush. As Buffy watches, the kid shakes his head no; Jack Skellington whispers something in his ear that changes his mind, and they make for the back door.

“I think we found our incubus,” Buffy says over her shoulder.

She doesn’t have to see it to know that Faith’s grinning. “Think he can handle two at once?”

-

The incubus doesn’t turn to dust once they’ve impaled it, sadly. It does sort of deflate, though, and give off a weird kind of rotting-candy smell. With the rate it seems to be disintegrating, Buffy doubts there’ll be enough of a body to warrant more than a mop by morning, much less a murder investigation, so she and Faith wash their hands and bail.

On the walk home, the cold is refreshing, and it’s nice to have a conversation to focus on when she brushes past big guys asking after a light or the time.

“I was sort of hoping for more of a fight,” Faith says, and Buffy– battle-high and still oddly buzzed from the club– tries and fails to suppress a snort: that’s Faith in one sentence.

She has no idea what her reaction looks like, though, because then Faith is snapping, “Excuse me, Slay Queen. Not all of us get our rocks off by being too sensitive and tragic for our calling.”

Buffy stops walking, trying to deal with ‘sensitive and tragic’ after constant accusations that she’s too eager to embrace slayer responsibilities.

“Jesus, I thought maybe– you know what?” Faith shakes her head, keeps walking, shoulder checks Buffy on her way past. “I don’t know how the incubus missed you, you’re a walking kabob.”

“A walking ka _what_ ,” Buffy demands, because apparently they’re arguing now. She feels like the evening has somehow fast-forwarded without her.

Faith whirls. “Come on, B,” she says, still walking, voice carrying as she tracks backwards. “You’re five-star, what with how far that stick goes up your–”

“That’s why you wanted help with the incubus!” Buffy shouts, suddenly getting it. She’s moving again, catching up to Faith. “You invited me here because you thought I was more repressed than you.”

“You saying you aren’t?”

“How could I possibly know that,” Buffy says, “when you’re too busy playing Bad to the Bone for me to have any idea what you’re actually like?”

Faith opens her mouth, presumably to say something crass, but then she’s being spun around and a hulking figure with a wrinkled brow has his hands on her shoulders, delivering some mustache-twirling line about how it’s rude for pretty girls to turn someone down when he’s just looking for a light.

Faith kicks him in the stomach so hard he skips off the sidewalk and into the street, and before he’s managed to get to his feet she’s shoving a stake through his chest. She watches his cigarette dissolve into dust with the rest of his body and remarks, not without remorse, “Really don’t have a lighter. Been meaning to pick one up.”

Buffy laughs until she can’t breathe. When she can focus enough to look up again, Faith rolls her eyes.

“I’m finishing the leftovers,” she mutters. She pockets her stake and starts toward the apartment again.

Buffy sprints to close the distance between them. “You don’t even like pineapple on pizza!”

Faith doesn’t turn, but she slows down until they’re walking side by side again. “I thought you didn’t know anything about me,” she replies, coy. She knocks a shoulder against Buffy’s.

They’re both grinning again. They keep doing that.

-

Buffy’s flight back isn’t until the next afternoon, because she had assumed she’d be up most of the night fighting, and the thought of navigating public transport in the Midwest on only a few hours of sleep made her want to use her powers for evil.

Faith shares the leftover pizza when they get back to the apartment, because she’s secretly all bark and no bite sometimes, and then Buffy actually gets a decent night of sleep. Exactly zero newly-superpowered teens wake her up in the middle of the night, and she is one hundred percent of the bathroom’s occupants during her entire morning beauty routine. She has a few lapses in sanity where it almost seems worth living on top of a hellmouth again just for the space and solitude.

Somehow “what time is your flight?” translated as “I’ll give you a ride to the airport” in Faith’s mind, so Buffy finds herself in the passenger seat of Faith’s car again. This ride is also quiet, but that’s– fine.

After Faith’s unloaded Buffy’s luggage and Buffy has figured out a way to juggle everything that she thinks Dawn would deem discrete, Faith just holds Buffy’s gaze for a second. She fiddles with her hair– it’s gotten really long– and then she’s smirking. 

“You’ll give me a call if the brats get out of hand, yeah?” she says, which is somehow not at all what Buffy was expecting.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “Two bedroom apartment, reasonably applied eyeshadow… you’re not a very good bad example anymore.”

Faith is grinning again. It fits her face so much better than it used to.

“Maybe I’ll drop by anyway,” she says. “Between the bar fights and the petty theft, I’m running out of places to drink in this town.”

“I stand abundantly corrected.”

“Knew you’d see the light, B,” Faith says softly. Buffy laughs a little, lingers until she realizes people are looking at them again.

“I have your number,” she says, finally. “Now go. I think that place has lighters, you can buy one duty-free.”

Faith smirks. “Just how I like ‘em,” she says, and then she’s walking away.

On the plane, Buffy practices not smiling to herself so she won’t have to deal with Dawn asking a hundred annoying questions.


End file.
